Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Kimbrel got married Dec. 1. The honeymoon in the Dominican Republic was relaxing and romantic and all it’s supposed to be, he said that seeing Ashley, his wife, shoot a deer on their first hunting trip together was a highlight of his offseason. That came during a weekend excursion arranged as part of a speaking engagement Kimbrel did for a foundation run by Dr. James Andrews.

“It was a nice eight-point, she killed it a few weeks ago,” Kimbrel said proudly. “They set up this hunt for us to go on. I was like, can I bring my wife? They said, yeah, sure. She wasn’t too excited about it at the time, but when we got down there and she shot it, she was so excited. She was, like, ‘I know what you’re talking about! This is so exciting.’”

...Kimbrel, at age 24 already the best closer in baseball, is coming off a season for the ages, having set new records by striking out half of all batters he faced in 2012 while piling up 16.66 strikeouts per nine innings—a number that looks evil (those 6’s) but probably wasn’t as frightening as Kimbrel seemed to most hitters.

Can the Alabama native sustain something close to this level of domination, after posting a 1.01 ERA and limiting opponents to a .126 batting average last season while striking out a record 50.2 percent of the batters he faced? Kimbrel sounds as if he’s ready to try.

“Hitters start picking up on your tendencies and the rhythms and the way you do things,” he said. “Try to mess up your timing or mess up the way you pitch a certain guy. You’ve just got to keep on trying to trick the hitter. That’s our job as pitchers, let him not know what’s coming. And if he does know, put it somewhere where he can’t hit it.”

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#2. Well, toward the end of the classic movie Double Indemnity, Barbara Stanwyck shoots Fred MacMurray in the gut, twice, but then stops and tells him that she didn't know how much she really loved him till she couldn't squeeze off that third shot.

The honeymoon "in the Dominican" was probably in Punta Cana, a self-contained tourism zone in the extreme east of the country, facing Puerto Rico. I know a couple who got married there. Although it's always possible that they went to hang out with Cristhian Martinez's family.

What would be the most romantic animal to kill with a knife? I say a salmon.

I grew up in a place where school was closed for the first day of deer hunting season, and the front page of the newspaper the next day was full of pictures of dead dear and the morons that shot them. The whole thing was disappointing, disturbing, take your pick. Today, it's amazing to me that 1) there are still so many who consider this sport and 2) society at large doesn't shun these idiots more.

A lot of Americans don't know that a Canadian marriage can't be consummated until the bride has bested a grizzly bear with a knife. Though younger generations are now starting shun that as unnecessarily traditional and kill (or are killed by) black bears, or imported Honey Bears from Cambodia (who are well known for their cowardice).

This largely explains why Canada's population is so low despite having so much space for people.

Exactly. People should buy their meat at the supermarket, where no animals were harmed in making it.

They aren't closing school and parading pictures because thank god everyone will be able to eat now. They are doing so because people love to kill for sport. This is what people question with the statements above.

What's strange about a honeymoon in the DR? Seems like a pretty typical place for a honeymoon to me.

They aren't closing school and parading pictures because thank god everyone will be able to eat now. They are doing so because people love to kill for sport. This is what people question with the statements above.

People hunt because they like to hunt, and the vast majority of hunters take the kill home for food. I'm no great fan of the "farm hunt" thing where you "hunt" an animal that's inside a hunting compound, but the antipathy toward "things I don't like because I didn't get along with the redneck contingent of my childhood high school parking lot" is nothing but infantile resentment.

I agree with 23. There's nothing wrong with hunting as long as it is regulated and I've never used anything more than a pellet gun in my life to shot at cans. I think people tend to look down on hunting because hunters who engage in it are more likely to have views that they disagree with. Same thing with NASCAR.

People who object to hunting are typically not objecting to it being "weird." If they found it weird, they would just roll their eyes and not participate (see: NASCAR, line dancing, etc). Instead, they are objecting because they find it immoral to hunt and kill animals for sport. Surely you see a difference there, even if you don't agree, right?

Instead, they are objecting because they find it immoral to hunt and kill animals for sport. Surely you see a difference there, even if you don't agree, right?

Are these people vegans? Do they watch boxing or MMA or football? Because if they aren't vegans, they're getting meat from somewhere. And I don't care how humanely you might raise your grass fed organic beef, at the end of the day, someone's stringing him up by his back legs and cutting his throat so his blood drains out. And most hunters don't hunt "for sport." It's a sportsmanlike activity. There's an entertainment factor involved. But most hunters hunt for food and sport, not merely to go shoot a living thing for fun. (The cases of Dick Cheney pheasant "hunting" with Smithers out front flushing the cage raised birds for the great man to slaughter is the exception, not he rule.)

There's nothing more morally repulsive about hunting than there is about watching college or professional football.

Keeping in mind that hunting is killing for sport, that's exactly what I said.

and the vast majority of hunters take the kill home for food.

I'd be curious about this figure natiowide. But it's beside my point.

If you want to equate the confusion about hunting for sport with the confusion about LARPing, go right ahead. I won't argue that the anti-hunting contingent is among the most shrill around; but the comparison of hunting to fantasy football from an opposition standpoint is similarly infantile.

I think people tend to look down on hunting because hunters who engage in it are more likely to have views that they disagree with. Same thing with NASCAR.

I'm sure that there are people who look down on hunters because they have views they disagree with. A very large and not at all insignificant percentage of the people who look down on hunters do so because they find killing for sport anywhere from pretty gross to morally unacceptable.

From a philosophically-inclined mind, this is ridiculous. Death is something in the world more notable than watching men wrestle

Death to an animal, which everyone in this conversation is part and parcel to barring vegetarians and vegans, vs gladiatorial combat and the "theater of pain" of football on _humans?_ There's a pretty long line of moral reasoning that distances "what we do to animals" from "what we do to people," no?

Again, if you're up in arms about hunting because the deer gets killed, you better damn well be eliminating any meat from your diet soon. Because Bessie didn't volunteer that hunk of red muscle meat for your filet, buddy.

Rural mid-Michigan? I had the same experience growing up.
Yeah, you nailed it. Wow.

It was (& I'm sure still is) the same in rural southwest Arkansas, not surprisingly. Except for the lack of a daily paper (I'm assuming there's still a small weekly, though it's a different one from when I was growing up).

With all due respect to Sam, the hunters tended to be slope-browed, slack-jawed rednecks ... even more so than the rest of us, I mean.

There is, I think, a moral imperative to make peace with being omnivorous (obviously vegetarians and vegans can excuse themselves from it, though one can apply arguments to the ethics of killing plants/funguses for food.) I don't hunt, but I do fish and then kill and eat said fish. And yes, I enjoy fishing. Not for the sake of killing fish, but let's say for the sport of it (I'm not sure it's quite right, but it's close enough). If you eat animals, but can't make peace with killing them, then that's immoral. Not celebrating your position in the circle of life.

With all due respect to Sam, the hunters tended to be slope-browed, slack-jawed rednecks

A fact that has nothing whatsoever to do with the moral issues of hunting as an activity. Your discomfort culturally with people you feel intellectually and socially superior to is another question altogether.

A lot of Americans don't know that a Canadian marriage can't be consummated until the bride has bested a grizzly bear with a knife. Though younger generations are now starting shun that as unnecessarily traditional and kill (or are killed by) black bears, or imported Honey Bears from Cambodia (who are well known for their cowardice).

I heard that if the bear wins, the groom is obligated to marry the bear. Can anyone confirm this?

There's an entertainment factor involved. But most hunters hunt for food and sport, not merely to go shoot a living thing for fun.

I'll back down if I see some data on this; but without it, I'm just not taking your word for an 85%-90% figure of food vs. fun. And "sport" is the same thing as fun.

I doubt any such data exists, but speaking as a guy who enjoys guns and shooting, I know plenty of people who hunt and I don't know a single one who doesn't eat what they kill. Not one. Presumably it's more fun for them than buying their meat from the grocery, but why is that a bad thing?

Nope. Doesn't mean my asking how you put them into the calculus is invalid. They are indeed here. I am still curious

My thing with the acceptance of the argument against hunting is that I see a moral and philosophiccal difference between the fun and sport of killing vs. the killing for food. As I said above, I'm not willing to take it on faith over numbers that the majority of hunters are doing so for food. (Let alone the figure of who is doing so PRIMARILY for food vs. simply eating what they had fun killing.)

I come from farmers, I understand and accept the use of animals to survive. The posts that started this were about the sport and glee involved in hunting. I don't think an utter distaste for that is close to an invalid position.

Presumably it's more fun for them than buying their meat from the grocery

That, and the flavor is different, since it's a different animal.

My granddad used to hunt rabbits for food, back during the Depression. He'd set some snares, spend a couple hours gathering berries and mushrooms and stuff like that, and whatever he found/caught and took home was what they had for dinner.

Eating wild mushrooms seems like a pretty big leap of faith to me, but I guess if you're hungry enough, you do what you have to do.

The federal government has been using various measures (including sharpshooters) to thin out the deer population in Washington D.C.'s Rock Creek Park for almost a year now, because there are just too damn many of them running around.

Hunting seasons don't exist solely for the purpose of people's personal entertainment. Good luck trying to explain that to some of the classic ignoramuses around here who think they know everything though.

Hunting seasons don't exist solely for the purpose of people's personal entertainment. Good luck trying to explain that to some of the classic ignoramuses around here who think they know everything though.

Annoyingly, I left out above the thinning of the herd due to our inevitable takeover of the planet from the things I could accept. Does this mean I continue to know everything, or not? Considering that isn't what anyone was talking about anyhow, as usual the bee in Joey's bonnet has nothing to sting.

Nope. Doesn't mean my asking how you put them into the calculus is invalid. They are indeed here. I am still curious.

Vegans have more of a platform to argue against hunting than omnivores, certainly. The case that "all animals should be treated like humans" is far more structurally sound than "we shouldn't hunt deer, but cows are yummy good." At least they're drawing their moral line in the trace of some realistic, biologically meaningful line in the world. I have a buddy who is a pescatarian. His moral line is drawn at "no mammals." Fish and poultry good. Mammal bad. I guess he could eat reptile and frogs too, if it came to it. Neither accepting or denying his moral claim, at least that line of thought is based on some real factor in the world. "I am a mammal. I do not want to be eaten. I should not eat other mammals."

Vegans draw that line between biological kingdoms. Where most of the US assumes the distinction of consciousness, pain and suffering is drawn between humans and "everything else" (almost certainly wrong, biologically), vegans draw the line between animal and plant. (This assumes, of course, that on some quantum level that we have no access to outside of peyote or LSD, plant life isn't screaming in pain when we pluck their baby pea pods from their loving arms.) Again, without agreeing or disagreeing, it's a rational line to draw. (Of interest, to be functionally sound about these things, a morally incented vegan - someone who is a vegan because it is wrong to consume animals or animal by product - who refuses to so much as eat a chicken egg, should by comparative logic be pro-life in his or her personal beliefs. If a chicken egg can't be sacrificed for breakfast, certainly a human ova must be respected and preserved as well. But that's another tangent altogether.)

So, to sum up, if vegans argue to me "hunting is horrific because killing animals is morally evil" I might disagree, but they have a foundation to stand on, argumentatively. If someone who's just finished noshing down a side of bacon makes the same argument, something is amiss. Which brings us to...

My thing with the acceptance of the argument against hunting is that I see a moral and philosophiccal difference between the fun and sport of killing vs. the killing for food. As I said above, I'm not willing to take it on faith over numbers that the majority of hunters are doing so for food. (Let alone the figure of who is doing so PRIMARILY for food vs. simply eating what they had fun killing.)

I come from farmers, I understand and accept the use of animals to survive. The posts that started this were about the sport and glee involved in hunting. I don't think an utter distaste for that is close to an invalid position.

This is a distinct argument from "it's morally wrong to kill the animal," but still questionable I think. Your case seems to reduce to "it's okay to kill the animal, so long as you feel sorry about it and make a sad face while he bleeds out." That is...tentatively less than compelling. I would posit that it makes little difference to Bambi or Bessie if the guy that kills them is sad or gleeful after the fact of their deaths. What with the being dead and all. "You can kill, just don't enjoy it" is a weak construction.

Even if we were to grant the argument that the thrill of the blood-kill is "invalid," then you're left needing to apply that same moral calculus against other bloodsports, such as football and boxing/MMA.

Are we to assume that back in the swamps where you grew up, the cream of society was to be found in the deer stands & duck blinds on a regular basis?

Many of the hunters I grew up with are people I'd prefer to never interact with again in my life. Many of them were perfectly fine people who happened to like to hunt. Many of the people whom I disagree with politically, religiously and generally speaking on every subject imaginable are hunters. Many of them are not. The one thing doesn't imply the other, and to the original point here, the fact that you're socially uncomfortable with people you think are culturally, economically and intellectually beneath you doesn't mean that hunting is evil or wrong.

This is a distinct argument from "it's morally wrong to kill the animal," but still questionable I think. Your case seems to reduce to "it's okay to kill the animal, so long as you feel sorry about it and make a sad face while he bleeds out." That is...tentatively less than compelling. I would posit that it makes little difference to Bambi or Bessie if the guy that kills them is sad or gleeful after the fact of their deaths. What with the being dead and all. "You can kill, just don't enjoy it" is a weak construction.

It's an odd, puritanical argument that hinges on the actor's enjoyment of the act being the critical element that determines "wrongness".

the fact that you're socially uncomfortable with people you think are culturally, economically and intellectually beneath you doesn't mean that hunting is evil or wrong.

Actually, most of the people to whom I'm referring were (& probably still are) economically above me & my family (well, I don't have any family anymore, but god knows the cats bring in no income); as of middle school, for instance, I'm pretty sure I was the only white kid in my class to qualify for free lunches, for instance.

I'm not morally opposed to hunting as long as the animals are eaten, and I'm not a vegetarian, but I just don't like killing anything. Even bugs. Maybe that makes me a huge hypocrite, but I yam what I yam.

I'm not comfortable with hunting simply because I can't understand why someone would want to kill something. It's not really a political statement.

I'm not comfortable with hunting simply because I can't understand why someone would want to kill something. It's not really a political statement.

This, pretty much. Not a vegetarian, either, though I was one for something like a combined total of 15 years (up till about 11 years ago), including some 2 1/2 as a vegan, & I tend to lean that way in general. (Haven't eaten any meat in a couple of weeks now, for instance, & haven't missed it.)

Even though it apparently makes me some sort of effete liberal, I have to say I don't have any huge problems with saying something like "There may very well be something basically, deeply wrong with people who like, or at the very least take satisfaction from, killing living creatures."

A corollary to the vegan argument: it is an odd moral world to construct that relies on a single premise being both true and false at the same time. In the case of veganism, the premise "humans are just another form of animal" is true in regard to the question of "is it morally okay to eat other animals?" In this case, the vegan case reduces humanity back into the "circle of life" of nature at large, in order to eliminate the traditional moral distinction between "things done to animals" and "things done to people."

But that same premise is adjudged to be false when the question is "why is it wrong for the human animal to hunt and eat meat, when other animals across the kingdom do exactly as much. What is the moral distinction between me hunting a deer and a lion taking down a gazelle?" At that point, humanity is sectored off from the rest of nature, red in tooth and claw, and required to live by a higher moral standard than the "circle of life" we were previously reduced to being a simple member of.

Oh, I saw all these posts and thought people were debating my inspired query of what's the most romantic animal to kill with a knife. Instead it's just everyone taking shots at the resident anti-hunting extremists.

I'm not comfortable with hunting simply because I can't understand why someone would want to kill something. It's not really a political statement.

No, but it is a *moral* statement. Well, it's either a moral statement, or a statement of aesthetic preference. If it's a moral statement - people who want to kill something are immoral beings in the world - then the conversation with Lassus is applicable. If it's a statement of aesthetic preference than you're obviously free to your belief, in much the same way Harvey is free to enjoy reality TV and Lassus is free to enjoy classical chorale music and Dial is free to watch 8 hour marathons of Law & Order SVU. At that point, I refer you back to may original point about fantasy sports, LARPing or building model airplanes. SPLST, OPLOT.

Even though it apparently makes me some sort of effete liberal, I have to say I don't have any huge problems with saying something like "There may very well be something basically, deeply wrong with people who like, or at the very least take satisfaction from, killing living creatures."

I thought liberals took special pride in being open minded to, and not condemning, cultures and behaviors different from their own. Or is this only in effect for politically advantageous situations?

No, but it is a *moral* statement. Well, it's either a moral statement, or a statement of aesthetic preference. If it's a moral statement - people who want to kill something are immoral beings in the world - then the conversation with Lassus is applicable. If it's a statement of aesthetic preference than you're obviously free to your belief, in much the same way Harvey is free to enjoy reality TV and Lassus is free to enjoy classical chorale music and Dial is free to watch 8 hour marathons of Law & Order SVU. At that point, I refer you back to may original point about fantasy sports, LARPing or building model airplanes. SPLST, OPLOT.

It's both, although I haven't really spent a lot of time thinking about my views on this subject.

I thought liberals took special pride in being open minded to, and not condemning, cultures and behaviors different from their own. Or is this only in effect for politically advantageous situations?

No, you're confusing "open-mindedness and tolerance" with "moral relativism", the latter of which is the RIGHT-WING phrase used to INSULT liberals. If someone thinks something is actually immoral, they won't tolerate it no mattter how tolerant they are.

That being said, I would agree that someone who thinks hunting is basically immoral is probably an extremely effete liberal indeed. I certainly haven't met many people with that point of view outside the student chapter of Amnesty International.

I have never hunted, and probably never will. Please observe how some of the North American first nations decayed when their traditional hunting was replaced with grocery stores and resource (mining) jobs. Also consider the fate of a wilderness animal, free for its whole life until a predator gets it, versus livestock, unfree until slaughtered.

Maybe I will hunt plankton or slime molds some day. Until then, it's slow floating-point code.

And for the record: I am not a hunter. As a general rule of thumb you can assume "I am not an X" in any case where X involves getting up at 4 AM and trudging into the cold morning wilderness where you sit and freeze for hours on end.

This is a distinct argument from "it's morally wrong to kill the animal," but still questionable I think. Your case seems to reduce to "it's okay to kill the animal, so long as you feel sorry about it and make a sad face while he bleeds out." That is...tentatively less than compelling. I would posit that it makes little difference to Bambi or Bessie if the guy that kills them is sad or gleeful after the fact of their deaths. What with the being dead and all. "You can kill, just don't enjoy it" is a weak construction.

It's an odd, puritanical argument that hinges on the actor's enjoyment of the act being the critical element that determines "wrongness".

I don't think this is my case/argument. I think my argument is more that I find it morally questionable to kill a living thing for a primary purpose other than food. I find it troubling that so many people find this killing to be that enjoyable. I wouldn't really say "EVIL, BURN THEM", but again, I don't find a distaste for this particular kind of glee at sport killing to be bizarre.

There's a huge assumption here that most hunters take pleasure in the kill, rather than the hunt.

You are correct, it is an assumption. I don't think it's huge. I don't think it's added pleasure in the specific kill, but I don't think separating it makes much sense, I guess. The hunt is a means to the killing, which is the end.

Well said. At this risk of going Akin on the crowd, is rape okay if you feel shameful and sad about it afterwards?

I hope you don't get pissed the way Dan does here, but you are better than this.

I think my argument is more that I find it morally questionable to kill a living thing for a primary purpose other than food. I find it troubling that so many people find this killing to be that enjoyable. I wouldn't really say "EVIL, BURN THEM", but again, I don't find a distaste for this particular kind of glee at sport killing to be bizarre.

Well, obviously not. Sure, you'll get a selection bias effect here, so you'll find some anti-football people more easily than in the general population. But the point is that blood sport is blood sport.

Which may be the part of the reason I find football, especially the NFL variety, pretty distasteful & have since pretty much my early teens, though god knows there are plenty of other reasons (media overkill, self-evidently stupid rules that get changed at the drop of a hat as often as not, steroids & the like, gambling, etc.).

I am fine with hunting for food, a bit less so for non-food product. I think many people (certainly including myself here) are too disassociated with what it means to raise and kill an animal. I, for one, should eat less meat and meat less often for this reason among others. I find hunting for sport distasteful but not immoral. I don't take pleasure in killing the various vermin that I occasionally feel the need to off - in some cases, it actively bothers me.

With all due respect to Sam, the hunters tended to be slope-browed, slack-jawed rednecks ... even more so than the rest of us, I mean.

As Sam said, most of the hunters I know (and I know a lot of them) are fine, intelligent, good people. A few fit the stereotype. But, then, a few of the people on this board fit the statnerd stereotype, too. Most don't.

As for "pleasure" in hunting, has anyone here taken pleasure in building something that isn't as good as you'd get from a professional? Or from repairing a part of their house or their car? There is pleasure to be had in being self-reliant. That is the pleasure of hunting - that you went out in the world and brought your own food home. The pleasure of being just a little bit more in control of your world and life than you were before.

There are undoubtedly some cretins who rejoice in the "kill" but the average hunter is not that guy.

Lassus, yes, you come off as a little extreme to me. You're essentially imagining a stereotype, applying a worst-case scenario and then judging a very large group of people according to that your imagination. If you've met an individual that meets these criteria then, by all means, judge them harshly as most (including most hunters) would.

I say all of this as someone who hasn't hunted or fished in over 25 years because, like many of you, I didn't enjoy the killing part. But, at one point, I did enjoy those two sports and not for the killing. I've eaten fish and quail that I've shot and, this will sound silly, they tasted better than fish and quail others shot. It was MINE. Something I did. I never liked the killing part of it, which is why I quit. Well, that and moving to more urban environments.

I will say the professional hunting businesses that all but tie up the animal in front of the clients are sick. And I do believe it immoral to kill an animal that is not threatening you and that you don't intend to eat. Also, if you're interested in becoming vegan, visit a feedlot or chicken hatchery some time.

Lassus, yes, you come off as a little extreme to me. You're essentially imagining a stereotype, applying a worst-case scenario and then judging a very large group of people according to that your imagination.

Um, hell no. I have said

1.) Hunting is killing
2.) People enjoy hunting
3.) I find the fact that people take such joy in hunting and killing for non-food reasons to be troubling to me.

There are undoubtedly some cretins who rejoice in the "kill" but the average hunter is not that guy.

I'm going to go out on a limb & say that the average hunter from backwoods SW Arkansas -- i.e. where I grew up & happened to form my impressions of the people I'm talking about -- is a hell of a lot closer to that guy than whatever urbane, sophisticated litterateurs with guns that you're basing your conclusion on.

1) Eating meat is killing
2) People enjoy eating meat
3) I find the fact that people take such joy in hunting when they could derive nutrition without killing to be troubling.

Basically, if you eat meat, you can't criticize hunting in general. For sure, you're entitled to criticize killing without using the animal but that is a small subset of the group you are criticizing.

If you don't believe hunting is immoral if you eat the animal, then you really don't think hunting itself is bad. If you do think hunting is immoral if you eat the animal, you should be a vegetarian. (I still wouldn't agree with you, but you'd be consistent in your judgement).

And, now, an awkward question; are you a vegetarian (awkward because you might be, in which case most of my beef with you is out the window)

I'm going to go out on a limb & say that the average hunter from backwoods SW Arkansas -- i.e. where I grew up & formed my impressions of the people I'm talking about -- is a hell of a lot closer to that guy than whatever urbane, sophisticated litterateur with a gun that you're basing your conclusion on.

I'm from Oklahoma, bub, so, I doubt it. Do Arkansans really not eat what they kill? The folks I know that hunt eat it, give it away, celebrate it. Hell, during deer season, we ate venison almost every night without ever paying for it or shooting it ourselves. Deer jerky lasted most of the year.

I think you're letting "for sport" do more work in that sentence than it does in the real world. When bunyon says:

I will say the professional hunting businesses that all but tie up the animal in front of the clients are sick. And I do believe it immoral to kill an animal that is not threatening you and that you don't intend to eat.

I agree with him completely. I think you, for whatever reason, conflate the majority of hunters with the people who do this (possibly because the majority of coverage worthy "hunting" stories are about celebrities of some sort or another going on "hunting trips" that are often this type of thing. I think that skews the perception a bit.

The vast majority - I'd go high 90 percentages here - of hunting in America is done in rural ares by people who kill and eat their kills. Many give portions of the kill to others in their communities as well. There may be some "joy of the kill" involved, but then they slaughter the animal and take it home to eat. And I find nothing particularly morally problematic about that act, as opposed to buying meat from a supermarket and pretending that you're not killing an animal in the process.

The most immoral acts of humans against animals in the world today is 1) the destruction of habitat such that animals have no ranges to live freely on, and 2) factory farming. Factory farming - chickens, hogs, cows, any of it - is far more immoral and disgusting than hunting.

I know hunters, there's all types. Some don't keep, eat any of it. Some eat it, give it away, celebrate it. I view them differently. (And none of them are rural types, at least not anymore.)
The only time I've ever hunted, I was 11. Tried to miss the perched bird I was aiming "at", inadvertently popped it in the throat. The end.

As for "pleasure" in hunting, has anyone here taken pleasure in building something that isn't as good as you'd get from a professional? Or from repairing a part of their house or their car? There is pleasure to be had in being self-reliant. That is the pleasure of hunting - that you went out in the world and brought your own food home. The pleasure of being just a little bit more in control of your world and life than you were before.

This is a good and important point. The enjoyment of hunting is, for most people, an irreducible aggregate that can't be broken down into overly simplistic explanations such as "enjoying killing". The pleasure of wilderness/outdoors activity. The satisfaction of having and using the skill and expertise required to succeed. The camaraderie of friends and other hunters. The self-reliance and sense of control set forth above. All of these things come together to explain why hunters enjoy hunting.

Personally, I haven't hunted in almost a decade; I just don't enjoy it enough to go out of my way to do it. If good friends pester me enough, I may go again; if not, I probably won't.

mongoose, by "celebrate" I don't mean "party". I mean, give thanks that there is food. For most of human history, food has not been guaranteed (it isn't today, despite how it appears). As Sam, says, an animal full of meat for a little hunk of metal is a very good deal.

mongoose, by "celebrate" I don't mean "party". I mean, give thanks that there is food. For most of human history, food has not been guaranteed (it isn't today, despite how it appears). As Sam, says, an animal full of meat for a little hunk of metal is a very good deal.

Well, that's better. I was envisioning some sort of Texas Chainsaw Massacre scenario for a moment there ...

I'm working so can't properly respond to everyone (or anyone), but lot of things happen indirectly. That conversation spins out into nowheresville. I made a point to use "discrete" above to avoid that sort of thing.

I come from generations of hunters and know many people who hunt, personal friends, who are not bad people. But hunting is ####### retarded, and is a much bigger part of our culture of violence than any movie or video game. Shooting things for fun is a shitty thing to do.

I can't see any way in which hunting (and eating the kill) is worse than eating factory-farmed meat. most meat you buy in a supermarket (local-sourcing can be an exception) lived a horrible life in a confined space, being pumped full of antibiotics and hormones and fed a diet of nothing but corn and ground-up animal parts. anybody who enjoys eating this kind of meat yet considers hunting distasteful or whatever is wearing blinders as to exactly how the meat gets into those little shrink-wrapped packages.

I've known many, many people who hunt and fish. The only ones I've met who don't eat their prey are the catch-and-release fly-fishing snobs.

Lassus I don't think you're being extreme, but I think you are misrepresenting the vast majority of people who hunt and fish. If you're solely railing against people who go on Trophy Hunts to put a lion head on the wall, don't lump them all in with "hunters". I don't fish to kill things - I fish because the act of fishing is a challenge, and fish are delicious.

whether you kill it or someone else does, eating meat means something gets killed. I prefer doing it myself. if killing animals bothers any of you, don't eat meat. if you are OK with eating meat that someone else raises and kills for you, I'd suggest withholding judgment on those who do it for themselves.

I can't see any way in which hunting (and eating the kill) is worse than eating factory-farmed meat.

I'm not Lassus, but...
Sure - but I don't think that's the issue. Getting really into the act of killing, as distinct from the accomplishment of the catch (whatever that means) - that's what can be creepy. Odds are that any fisherman/hunter reading this has an idea where they are on that spectrum.

I don't hunt (or fish). I am not too fond of killing things (vermin excepted - stay the #### out of my house mice). I find hunting distastful (personally) but not immoral. I have plenty of friends who hunt.

I eat meat. I know where the meat I eat comes from and think I would be a better person if I didn't eat meat, but not so much I am willing to stop eating meat (though I eat much less than most and wouldn't be horrified to be Vegitarian - plants are yummy).

I suspect someday there will be vat grown meat and then I will be able (but not that much more likely) to get on my high horse and be all moral about the whole thing (and eat my vat grown meat - which I am sure will be very tasty).

Sure - but I don't think that's the issue. Getting really into the act of killing, as distinct from the accomplishment of the catch (whatever that means) - that's what can be creepy. Odds are that any fisherman/hunter reading this has an idea where they are on that spectrum.

This is a meaningless distinction though. This morally horrible act (factory farming) is ignored because no one is enjoying it, but this less morally horrible act (hunting) is terrible because someone is?